Aibu. ahhh boss quibbling over 1 minute.

[Peterbear]

IWork for a council in E England. NEw boss has just emailed to say that she has checked my time sheets - on a couple of days last month i have written start time as 8am. ( work from home since covid) I did not however send in my 'log on' email till 8.01. I am being asked to go back and amend my time sheet.
Wtf?? Do I say don't be ridiculous that is a complete waste of taxpayer money or do I just play along? Worth saying that I often work a bit over and don't log this as feel it's petty to put for example 5.07 on a time sheet. Wwyd? Aibu to think jesus get a bloody life??

[ElinoristhenewEnid]

@LadyFlumpalot. Re the sickness post the name changed from Calf123 to yellowfish123.

[Pobblebonk]

I quite enjoy Calf123's fantasy world, where the managers never do any managing because they spend their lives patrolling to ensure employees never slack off, lock the doors to prevent them leaving without permission, hold meetings to decide whether an employee is going to be allowed to be on sick leave, and time how long they spend in the loos.

In some of her personas her husband runs a mystery school where they regularly expel pupils illegally without anyone making a fuss, and make the teachers clean the school as well as working their socks off to ensure the pupils achieve solid Grade A results, all within normal working hours.

[bringincrazyback]

Was it Calf123 who said that anyone poorly had to phone in and a manager decided if they were ill enough for sick leave or not? I've found the thread where she kept the doors locked and patrolled the office at lunchtime, but I can't find the one about sickness.

It certainly was. She changes her name quite a bit, but you can always tell it's her from the phrases she uses, and the general sentiments.

[LadyFlumpalot]

Was it Calf123 who said that anyone poorly had to phone in and a manager decided if they were ill enough for sick leave or not? I've found the thread where she kept the doors locked and patrolled the office at lunchtime, but I can't find the one about sickness.

[verybritishproblems]

Senior managers do patrol the office every so often to ensure our policy is being followed, but thankfully most staff comply.

Bloody hell sounds like the Stasi. What a horrible place to work, being treated like children. You know keeping your employees happy is key, their well-being effects the work they do for you. I used to do work for a similar place it’s emotionally draining and you don’t feel valued. I ended up just phoning the work in, doing the minimum and then I left, as did others.

I work in an office now which works on flexi time, so you come in when you want, leave when you want, take breaks when you want and guess what, we are all adults and we all work hard and get stuff done. I work longer hours if I need to and finish early if I can. In fact I work more because I love my employer and I feel respected and part of the team.

Hope this sort of nonsense stops in workplaces it’s not good for either party in the end.

[JacobReesMogadishu]

So if they are employed from 8am-5pm, they should be logged on and working at 8 and should log off at 5pm

Back in the days when I had a shit job and shit managers and therefore clock watched to the nth degree I very much considered turning the computer on as a work task. After all I’m not doing it for my personal enjoyment and it’s not my problem that the work computers take a couple of minutes to fire up. I would hit the on button at 9am prompt.

The union backed us up on this. To the extent that when the office moved up quite a few floors in the building the union rep negotiated that we could all finish work at 4:58 as it would take us an extra 2 mins to get out the building. 😁👍

Funnily enough with better managers we wouldn’t have dreamed about being so petty.

[Pobblebonk]

As a company, we expect staff to be spending their working hours, well, working. We simply cannot afford to have people coming in at 9, chatting to people and making cups of tea.

Staff should be logged on and ready to go by their start role and they should be working right up until 5pm. They are perfectly free to get drinks during their lunch break.

Any manager with an ounce of common sense knows that actually their company cannot afford to work in this way. Staff recruitment and induction are very expensive, and operating like this in a way that ensures rapid staff turnover means your recruitment and training costs will go through the roof.

It isn't efficient, either. I once worked somewhere where the manager made a massive deal of starting work on the dot of 9 a.m. and the second the lunchbreak was over. It meant everyone clockwatched, spun tasks out, and stopped work on the dot even if they were mid word. It was incredibly inefficient.

Senior managers do patrol the office every so often to ensure our policy is being followed, but thankfully most staff comply.

What a ludicrous and expensive waste of senior management time.

[lynfordthecrab]

Your boss is an absolute fannyflob. Feel free to tell her I said so! From a business owner not a bloody jumped up manager. Log on at 7.59, log out after 5.05. Query the overtime when it hasn't been paid. Shout FUCK OFF at the computer every time you receive an email from her. Are your colleagues having the same problem?

[bringincrazyback]

Is 'fishyduck' 'calf123' in disguise? As in the staff are locked in til closing time?

Course she is. The phrase 'senior managers patrol the office' totally gave it away. Yawn.

[CoalTitCafe]

Ah interesting, I think IT have done something with ours because I can't customise ANYTHING.

[Moltenpink]

@CoalTitCafe

Covidisdrivingmecrazy

You know you can just set your Skype to busy for the day?

It will switch to "away" or "inactive" if you're not doing anything though.

You can change Skype settings so it checks you at longer intervals. I have mine on 15 mins, so I stay available for that length of time without touching the keyboard.

[QueenCT]

@Babysharkdoodoodood sure I get that but what I mean is you can't just be 15 mins late every day or leave 10 mins early or go and make a brew if there's calls queueing
That's definitely very different to the trust I worked for! No 30 min changeovers, no TOIL approved there and then (unless of course mega emergency), no emails to read and no making yourself unavailable at the end of the shift
I was once stuck at work for 2hrs after the end of my shift

I mean the job I'm in now is fairly flexible but lateness either for shift or breaks/lunches isn't (I can't think of the word..) it's not lenient. You get 30 mins for lunch, and not 31!

[User478]

You can install a mouse jiggler if you really want Skype to show you as active all day. archive.codeplex.com/?p=mousejiggler

It won't reply to emails for you, or answer 999 calls though.

[Babysharkdoodoodood]

[quote QueenCT]@LadyFlumpalot that's fine in your job
But if you ring 999 and there's nobody there as it's shift changeover.. plus you are relieving someone else from their shift, you can't just wander off and get a coffee and be late!
or a bank or a supermarket contact centre or any of those. Sorry I had to go and get the kids doesn't work for those jobs, your hours are the hours you are logged on and working[/quote]
Actually I'm in emergency despatch and when I'm in (wfh atm) we sometimes have to man the 9's lines. However, we have human supervisors and if we need to leave early for any reason, then we book an hours toil and they'll approve it there and then.
It's not like you're the only one on shift. We have teams across the county and 30 minute changeovers so there always plenty of call takers on. We're always told to go through our emails towards the end of shift as well, so we don't get caught on a long call.

[LadyFlumpalot]

[quote QueenCT]@LadyFlumpalot that's fine in your job
But if you ring 999 and there's nobody there as it's shift changeover.. plus you are relieving someone else from their shift, you can't just wander off and get a coffee and be late!
or a bank or a supermarket contact centre or any of those. Sorry I had to go and get the kids doesn't work for those jobs, your hours are the hours you are logged on and working[/quote]
Oh yes, of course - sorry I did not word myself well. My point was more that if you treat your staff like children, you are more likely to attract people that behave like children. Treat them like adults and they will work hard.

[CoalTitCafe]

Covidisdrivingmecrazy

You know you can just set your Skype to busy for the day?

It will switch to "away" or "inactive" if you're not doing anything though.

[BoxAndKnife]

I think everyone on this thread realises that if you're working an emergency response phone line or similar, different rules apply.

I worked in the NHS for years. If course you make sure you're on shift on time, because other people are genuinely disadvantaged if you're late. It's not petty or jobsworth-y to expect punctuality in that workplace scenario.

But the OP isn't talking about that. I am willing to bet a year's salary that absolutely no one and nothing is inconvenienced in any way even if OP does indeed log on 1 minute late.

[Tappering]

Our organisation is a lot like @LadyFlumpalot's employer. Consequently we have really low staff turnover and nobody takes the piss. I don't police my team to make sure that someone's covering at 8am because they do it between themselves.

However I agree with @QueenCT that this approach won't work for all jobs. I do think there are a lot of firms that get needlessly upright about presenteeism though, and that could change their working culture if they wanted. My employer used to be like this but we had a change of CEO. HR recently shared the results of some analysis they'd done, which showed that since the change of culture was implemented, staff turnover has dropped, employee satisfaction is up, our NPS score with our customers is up, sickness is down and productivity has improved.

[QueenCT]

@LadyFlumpalot that's fine in your job
But if you ring 999 and there's nobody there as it's shift changeover.. plus you are relieving someone else from their shift, you can't just wander off and get a coffee and be late!
or a bank or a supermarket contact centre or any of those. Sorry I had to go and get the kids doesn't work for those jobs, your hours are the hours you are logged on and working

[Covidisdrivingmecrazy]

You know you can just set your Skype too busy for the day?

[AdoptedBumpkin]

Very petty.

[livefornaps]

@NinkiNonkiNikau, you know what i'm talking about

[LadyFlumpalot]

@FishyDuck

Tbh I can see why your boss is annoyed- if your start time is 8am, that is the time you should be at your desk working, having already logged on. It doesn’t mean you saunter in the door at 8, make a cup of tea and log on at 8.15.

I’m a senior manager and director of a medium-sized company and we expect our employees to be working throughout their contracted hours. So if they are employed from 8am-5pm, they should be logged on and working at 8 and should log off at 5pm.

Staff should not be making cups of tea during working hours and they should not be logging off their computer before their finish time.

Oh that's fucking hilarious.

My start time is 8am. Sometimes I'm there on time, sometimes I'm not. Sometimes I'll go and get a cuppa, sometimes I won't. Sometimes I get up and wander on over to the Costa concession for a sit down and a hot chocolate whilst I try and think through a problem.

If I need to go and get the kids early I just go and get the kids. If I'm late in because they were playing up before the school run then I'm late in.

Last week I had to sign off early because I felt ill. I emailed my boss and he sent me back a picture of his new puppy with the caption "to help you feel better, rest up".

My boss doesn't give a shit. Do you know why? Because he treats us like adults. And in return we are all more than happy to work extra hours/weekends if needed. Our team is motivated, happy and efficient.

Oh, and I work for a multi-billion pound global
entity.

[oakwood13]

I think in the OPS shoes I would log the extra minutes after 5, at least for a while.

The general comments about managers ring true, people over-promoted either because of their technical ability, or I suspect in some cases either as a reward for long service, or to get them out of the way from some other part of the business.

[verybritishproblems]

Staff should not be making cups of tea during working hours and they should not be logging off their computer before their finish time

Hahahahahahaha